Papua New Guinea - Kimel Plantation Peaberry

When Tom re-cupped this Kimel peaberry he noticed that a Full City roast seemed more apropos than a lighter roast. Going a bit darker brings out the complex spice palate in this vibrant coffee, in fact, I totally forgot to change the label to reflect this reassessment, so my apologies. For today's roast we took each batch to 440 degrees and they timed out at about 14 minutes--first crack began at 402 degrees. The reason these batches finished a couple minutes faster than normal is: I cleaned the jets on the gas fired Probat and WOW did it make a difference. I'd become accustomed to roast times more in the 16-18 minute range and every so often Tom would say "we really should clean those burner jets soon, it'll make a big difference". The Probat has a basic layout of 26 gas jet burners that each have a flared tip, by unscrewing each of these I was able to thoroughly remove any build up of carbon that was blocking the pathway for the gas. Now it is running hotter than before and I had to monitor the heat level much more carefully to keep each batch in the same ballpark time-wise. It was a fun challenge and a good way to learn more skills to provide a quality roast for everyone to enjoy.

It just gives you a bit more power to play with. The L-12 is a bit underpowered with full batches but you can re-jet it and such, if you want. It works well for us as is, stock. You use batch size to modify roast times and get some more power - if you yield 20 Lbs a batch you will be mostly at full throttle, and use air control for adjustments. If you go down to 18 Lb yield you can play with the burners a lot more and still hit your roast times. But the genius of a probat L-12 is that , if the machine is clean and air flow is good, you get great roasts that track perfectly one after another, without having to fiddle with the gas control a lot. That's the brilliance of the engineers who designed it, basically 50+ years ago, still unchanged for the most part with our early '90s vintage machine. It's like the Bell rotary telephone of roasters. -tom